“Talent labors, genius creates.” Florestan (one of Schumann’s characters) Robert Schumann,Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Muisker  (Leipzig, 1854), IV.  Cited in Weiss, Piero & Taruskin, Richard (2008) Music in the Western World: A History in Documents.  California: Thomson, p. 306.

“Now we know that you are gifted, very gifted, but you must work very hard, because someone who is gifted has to work harder than someone who is not, and you will see how boring it is to work hard at music.” Ravel to Manuel Rosenthal after a concert. Cited in: Nichols, Roger (1987) Ravel […]

“There was a time, not so long ago, that Klaus Heymann was accused of trying to destroy the classical music industry. That was around the same time that the world realized that Naxos, Heymann’s budget-record label, was not just another series of CDs in the bargain bin. At first, nobody really knew what to make […]

“I was born with eyes closed listening to my heartbeat from my mother’s womb… There, without knowing it, I discovered that I would be born and would die for music…” – Alicastro Source: Peer Music.‘

Samuel Sebastian Wesley received great reviews for his conding at Gloucester’s annual Three Choir Festivals in 1865. An critic in The Musical Times wrote in the October issue: We have said nothing of the orchestra during these performances, for in truth the perfect manner in which the whole of the instrumental portions of the works […]

Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor proved very popular with the public. At times, it was programmed “by request” (1), and if not was freqently expected as an encore. In 1922, Rachmaninoff performed in the Queens Hall (London). A critic in the Musical Times described the event: It was clear that the bulk of those who filled Queen’s Hall […]

In 1995, Bjork released a big band jazz cover of Betty Hutton’s 1948 hit “Blow a Fuse”. This was a cover of an Austrian song “Und jetzt ist es still” by Hans Lang and Erich Meder. Bjork said of the song: Isn’t that the best song you’ve heard for five years? In a way it […]

When Vladimir Horowitz performed in Japan: …. a kitchen had to be built in his suite because he insists that all his meals – fish or chicken only – be taken there. The electrical wiring ran afoul of Tokyo fire laws, requiring new wallpaper and a special floor. Several critics suggested in a music journal […]

Theatre director Herbert Wernicke has taken six of Bach’s Cantatas dealing with the frailty of the human condition and presented them in a staging of mundane human activities.  Albrecht Puhlmann, the general director of Stuttgart Opera, states that “From the woman with the baby to the coffin being carried out, life and death is being […]